The Utter Futility of Seeking Republican Budget Votes
Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, in a smarmy and statistically misleading column yesterday, criticized President Obama for not being sufficiently bipartisan in his efforts to get a budget through Congress:
But the fundamental reality here--and Obama surely realized this--is that seeking Republican support for a budget proposal is the very definition of a futile endeavor. And that's for one simple reason: There is not a single Republican at the national level who will even consider voting for a tax increase, no matter how small, no matter how necessary. The vast majority of Republicans have taken oaths never to vote for a tax increase. And the others are well aware that any vote in favor of a tax increase would instantly and irrevocably result in them becoming a persona non grata in GOP circles. They would be viciously attacked by virtually every Republican activist group and scorn would be heaped upon them by virtually every conservative columnist, blogger, and talking head. They might as well switch parties because they would have no future as a Republican. Which goes a long way toward explaining why no Republican in Congress has voted for a tax increase in the last 20 years.
On the other hand, any responsible budget at this point in our history will necessarily contain at least some tax increases. Obama ran on a platform promising to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans (and won easily). So he has only two choices: 1) put forward a responsible budget that is consistent with his campaign promises (and which is guaranteed to receive zero Republican votes) or 2) put forward a totally irresponsible budget that contains no tax increases in the hopes of garnering a few Republican votes. Isn't it pretty obvious why he chose option 1?
Moreover, even if he had chosen option 2, the strong likelihood is that he would still have received zero Republican votes. The Republican party is in full opposition/obstruction mode right now and has shown zero interest in working with Obama on anything. And it's not as if there wouldn't have been something else in the budget they could have latched onto as a reason to vote no. This is, after all, a party whose alternative budget proposal included a five year spending freeze (something even conservative economists concede is totally crazy).
The reality is that Obama never had any chance of getting any Republican to vote for his budget proposal. Seeking bipartisan support is great, but Obama would have a better chance of walking on water than getting a Republican to vote for a budget with his name on it.
Obama was supposed to be the antidote to the poison of partisanship. During the presidential campaign, chief strategist David Axelrod told Brownstein, "If there's an enhanced Democratic majority, I think that he's going ... to urge a special sense of responsibility to try and forge coalitions around these answers, not because we won't be able to force our will in many cases, but because, ultimately, effective governance requires it in the long term."First, the idea that requiring 60 votes is "normal," especially with respect to budget resolutions is ridiculous. As is the claim that Republicans were not consulted about anything. Obama bent over backwards to seek their input and listen to any legitimate proposals they might have.
That makes last week's votes on the budget resolutions a landmark of ineffective governance. Not a single Republican in the House or Senate supported the bill, largely because the Democratic majority forced its will. Republicans were flattened, not consulted. Democratic leaders talk of enacting controversial elements of the budget through the reconciliation process -- which would require 51 Senate votes, not the normal 60, for passage. Only in Washington would the word "reconciliation" refer to a form of partisan warfare.
But the fundamental reality here--and Obama surely realized this--is that seeking Republican support for a budget proposal is the very definition of a futile endeavor. And that's for one simple reason: There is not a single Republican at the national level who will even consider voting for a tax increase, no matter how small, no matter how necessary. The vast majority of Republicans have taken oaths never to vote for a tax increase. And the others are well aware that any vote in favor of a tax increase would instantly and irrevocably result in them becoming a persona non grata in GOP circles. They would be viciously attacked by virtually every Republican activist group and scorn would be heaped upon them by virtually every conservative columnist, blogger, and talking head. They might as well switch parties because they would have no future as a Republican. Which goes a long way toward explaining why no Republican in Congress has voted for a tax increase in the last 20 years.
On the other hand, any responsible budget at this point in our history will necessarily contain at least some tax increases. Obama ran on a platform promising to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans (and won easily). So he has only two choices: 1) put forward a responsible budget that is consistent with his campaign promises (and which is guaranteed to receive zero Republican votes) or 2) put forward a totally irresponsible budget that contains no tax increases in the hopes of garnering a few Republican votes. Isn't it pretty obvious why he chose option 1?
Moreover, even if he had chosen option 2, the strong likelihood is that he would still have received zero Republican votes. The Republican party is in full opposition/obstruction mode right now and has shown zero interest in working with Obama on anything. And it's not as if there wouldn't have been something else in the budget they could have latched onto as a reason to vote no. This is, after all, a party whose alternative budget proposal included a five year spending freeze (something even conservative economists concede is totally crazy).
The reality is that Obama never had any chance of getting any Republican to vote for his budget proposal. Seeking bipartisan support is great, but Obama would have a better chance of walking on water than getting a Republican to vote for a budget with his name on it.
posted by A.L. at 12:47 PM
24 Comments:
Much as disagree with their issues, I applaud their passion.
Imagine if the Dems had stood together against Torture, or unlawful imprisonment, or government eavesdropping.
Maybe I should join the Reps and try to change them from within - at least you know where you stand with them.
Since the Republicans are so fond of pledging "fiscal responsibility", I've got an idea. In the 2010 and 2012 elections, go to any GOP candidate town meeting, and if you can, ask them to publicly pledge that under no circumstances will they support financing an invasion/military action against North Korea/Iran/Venezuela/Cuba/Somalia etc. that is paid for by loans from China.
They don't want deficit spending? Great. That means that the US people actually will have to pay UP FRONT for the next GOP war.
Seriously, make them pledge this. It will be comical to see them either refuse to do so or pretend that they wouldn't be in favor of invading all those countries I listed.
There is not a single Republican at the national level who will even consider voting for a tax increase, no matter how small, no matter necessary.
For the SCHIP expansion, 40 House Republicans and 8 Senate Republicans voted for it out of 219 total Republicans.
They would be viciously attacked by virtually every Republican activist group and scorn would be heaped upon them by virtually every conservative columnist, blogger, and talking head.
I believe that's true, especially with the taxes being raised to pay for the SCHIP expansion ("smoke 'em if you got 'em"). Besides, the Republicans who voted for it should be vilified (as well as the Democrats); it's an absolutely stupid method to pay for children's health care.
Obama ran on a platform promising to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans (and won easily).
I would assume you mean income taxes. Because if you include all taxes, then Obama already broke his promise with SCHIP since the vast majority of cigarette smokers aren't anything approaching "the wealthiest Americans".
Steve,
So, are you in favor of LOWERING the cigarette tax then?
So, are you in favor of LOWERING the cigarette tax then?
Absolutely. I hate children (/snark).
In regards to SCHIP, it's a stupid tax because a) there aren't enough smokers to pay for it; and, b) various levels of government already spend a fortune on trying to get people to quit smoking, which means there will be even less tax money for the SCHIP. The additional tax for SCHIP is self-defeating.
But, it was politically easier for the Democratic Congress (and the dumb Republicans) and the Obama administration to do something really stupid than it was to actually think up a more sensible excise tax (ie., a small increase in the alcohol tax) to pay for it.
Steve,
Nobody said you hated children.
However, you said that raising the cigarette tax represented a broken campaign promise not to raise taxes on the less wealthy. Fine. Of course, how would your "sensible" excise tax increase on alcohol not have been considered a broken tax pledge by Obama in the eyes of our easily hyperventilating right?
I would assume you mean income taxes. Because if you include all taxes
I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that that is exactly what A.L. meant. I'm also going to go even farther out on that limb so speculate that that is exactly what Obama meant when talking about who would get a tax increase. In all the discussion that I heard through-out the campaign and beyond Everyone I heard/read was talking about the Income Tax. It was what was used in all examples. It never even occurred to me the Obama administration had even implied some sort of promise regarding any other federally imposed taxes.
Apropos, I occasionally hear/read that Social Security and Medicare need to be fixed. I'm not going to take a position on that because my beliefs are irrelevant to my point which is: the argument always comes up that to fix these problems you have to either lower the benefits or raise the tax. I don't recall one instance of anyone talking about possible conflicts with Obama's proposed tax policy. Everyone concludes that Obama was talking about the Income Tax. It's considered almost axiomatic.
Pete:
Nobody said you hated children.
It was a joke. I know nobody accused me of hating children.
Of course, how would your "sensible" excise tax increase on alcohol not have been considered a broken tax pledge by Obama in the eyes of our easily hyperventilating right?
Here's the thing. I and others on the right have raised that argument before. What happens is that Obama/Democrat defenders immediately proclaim Obama meant income taxes, hypocritically ending the argument (because he hasn't signed a bill raising income tax levels...yet).
One thing about AL's post. He said "There is not a single Republican at the national level who will even consider voting for a tax increase." If regards to an income tax increase, he's probably right. But if AL thinks some Republicans wouldn't vote for a tax increase on something, then the SCHIP vote shows that this wasn't the case. In that regard, I wish AL had been right.
I read this analogy on another board in February, things were already so obvious about Republican Bipartisanship.
So, I am going to dinner with a buddy, and I want us both to enjoy it. I tell my friend that I like seafood and steaks.
He tells me that he trying out an alternative diet, and he is really into eating Burnt Rubber and Chards of Glass and Metal.
How the Hell can we possibly find a restaurant we both like, even though I want my friend to be "satisfied"?
The Republican fetish for tax cuts has some legitimate roots, if you go back to the late 1970's, when marginal tax rates (combined federal and state) were, I believe, as high as 70%, and tax shelters were all the rage. In those times, it made sense that reducing these marginal tax rates would be helpful in general, and would actually increase tax revenue. Fine. The situation now is totally different. Marginal rates are not that high, and the government desperately needs to raise revenues. In the context of today, a responsible tax increase might raise federal tax rates from 35% to 40%. This would not cause people to "go Galt" or stampede into tax shelters. It would simply be part of bringing tax revenues more in line with government expenditures. In any case, tax increases or decreases are not the entire economic story. The country needs to do many things to get its fiscal house in order. In this context, it is really crazy to keep stamping one's foot and repeating "cut taxes" over and over again, year after year, decade after decade, and obstruct ANY other approach.
barkleyg has hit the issue squarely on its head.
As popular as it is to the voting public, the issue of 'bipartisanship' is really a highly charged partisan conservative issue. What 'bipartisanship' really means in Washingtonese is 'bringing the center-right together with the far right in a manner that paints the center as the left and the center-left as the far left while excluding the real left entirely.' It is a political tactic, not a serious mode of statesmanship.
Statesmanship is about governing, and while governing is genuinely about compromise it is ridiculous to expect a president elected on a center-to-center-right platform (as this president was) to pander to the far right in the way Republicans, Blue Dogs, and beltway pundits mean when they talk about 'bipartisanship.'
The president is attempting to include all views. He is not following the bad advice of the far right because it is obviously bad. He is not following the good advice from the left because he believes it to be obviously politically inexpedient. He is attempting to build a coalition of the center and center-left to counteract the coalition of the center-right and right while trying to include anyone from the center-right willing to meet him.
Personally, I think he should be listening more to those from the genuine left but I understand the inherent flaws in the Democratic Party that make this difficult or impossible. It is ridiculous, however, to make the claim that he is excluding the right. He is making every overture he can without outright pandering, in much the same way Eisenhower did.
All this noise about artisanship" is crap - the repugs had virtually everything they wanted for 8 years.
There was no "opposition" party and even after running (and winning) on "accountability" in 2006 - the dems repeatedly capitulated to the most unpopular president in US history.
The repugs lost in 2006 and 2008. The public overwhelmingly identifies the current economic crisis with their failed policies.
There is no reason to give them anything - it isn't about "bipartisanship".
It's about democracy - the public has widely refused to accept any more repug/neocon crap.
If it was not for the lying liars in the mainstream media that "catapult the propaganda", there would not even be a credible republican party.
The Republican fetish for tax cuts has some legitimate roots, if you go back to the late 1970's, when marginal tax rates (combined federal and state) were, I believe, as high as 70%, and tax shelters were all the rage.
While I certainly won't argue this point, I will add the factoid that in the late 1970's when marginal tax rates combined were a possible 70%, it was still possible for a typical family to thrive on a single income. That hasn't been the case in a generation, and doesn't look to change any time soon. Plus, the tax increases being proposed aren't targeting the "typical" family, they're targeting people above a certain income level.
Rather than focus on the tax rate, I would prefer our leadership look at the causes for this grossly inflated cost of living. My money is on deregulation, but I accept I could be wrong.
Why would any Republican vote for a budget that increases taxes and increases spending even more? From a standpoint of fiscal responsibility, this budget goes in the wrong direction.
I agree that we will need revenue increases to solve our fiscal crisis, and that this means that some taxes will have to go up. I happen to disagree that Obama's tax increases (with some exceptions, like the estate tax) are the way to go.
But lets assume that Obama's tax increases are a necessary part of the solution. It would still not make sense for a Republican to embrace politically painful tax increases along with large increases in government spending. Even fiscally conservative Democrats are having a hard time swallowing Obama's budget.
The only way a Republican would have a reason to support Obama's tax increases would be if Obama were to put spending cuts of comparable political pain on the table.
MLS,
I'm sorry, but your comment so entirely misses the point. You claim that you would support certain tax increases if the budget otherwise met with your approval. I'm glad. But my post wasn't about you. It was about Congressional Republicans. And the point is that under no circumstances would they ever vote for a tax increase. If Obama had outsourced the entire writing of the budget to the GOP leaders in Congress and then added one provision increasing marginal tax rates on the wealthy (no matter how small), he still would not have received a single Republican vote.
I realize that people of good faith and intelligence can disagree over how the budget should be structured and that such people may have serious qualms about Obama's budget, but that was not my point.
My point was that now matter what Obama did, he was going to receive zero Republican votes, so he might as well put together the budget that he thinks is best. That's it. That's all I was saying.
AL- I fear that it is you who missed the point. Your hypothesis is that no congressional Republican would ever vote for a tax increase. My point is that the failure of Obama's budget to receive any Republican votes is not evidence in support of that hypothesis.
I could assert that no Democrat will ever vote for a cut in entitlement programs. That may be true, but asserting it is not the same thing as providing evidence to support it.
My point is that the failure of Obama's budget to receive any Republican votes is not evidence in support of that hypothesis.
Of course it's not. That wasn't my point either. The evidence is the fact that no Republican in Congress has voted for a tax increase since 1990 and virtually all of them have pledged, in writing, never to do so under any circumstances. Have you paid any attention to politics of taxication in the GOP? They are dogmatically opposed to tax increases of any kind. There are numerous activist groups that stand ready and willing to attack and primary any Republican who does so. I don't even think any Republicans would deny this reality. Moreover, virtually every Republican, including all o there presidential candidates and hopefuls, continue to repeat the tired nonsense that lowering taxes raises revenue. A central part of all of their platforms are massive tax cuts. Republicans don't vote for tax increase. Period.
MLS,
Let's concede your point. Suppose Obama had proposed a stern and bipartisan budget to make David Broder swoon. Maybe a few Congressional Republicans would have strapped it on and voted for it, tax hikes and all. MAYBE.
But why in the world should Obama compromise his principles in the hopes of gaining a few opposition party votes? I'd be surprised and appalled to see any conscientious politician betray his principles in the hopes of achieving the abstract goal of bipartisanship -- for the sake of bipartisanship.
From where I'm sitting, all of this hand-wringing over Obama's "failure to reach across the aisle" etc. etc. sounds like weak-ass sour grapes from a political party with absolutely no other card to play.
Tom- I think we are talking about two different issues. The first is the extent to which bipartisanship is a desirable/necessary goal apart from its utility in achieving one’s immediate policy preferences. Warren Buffet argued the other day that our economic situation is comparable to being at war, and that the imperative is for bipartisan unity behind the commander-in-chief, which in turn requires that the Democrats not use the crisis to ram through controversial policies. Many people made similar arguments about how George Bush should respond to 9/11.
My own view is that there are both costs and benefits to bipartisanship. In Bush’s case, for example, I thought that he might have reasonably come to the conclusion that the cost of true bipartisanship would be to weaken his presidency and therefore undermine his ability to fight the war on terror and therefore outweigh the unifying benefits (this was in 2002, before it became evident that Bush didn’t do cost-benefit analysis before taking actions). I certainly don’t begrudge Obama the right to reach the same conclusion. However, there will be costs of following a less bipartisan path, as Bush learned (or would have learned, had he been capable of learning). A minor cost is that he will be fairly criticized, by Gerson and others, for not being bipartisan.
The other issue has to do with what are the best, or per AL the most “responsible,” fiscal policies for the government to pursue. Obviously this is partly a matter of ideology, because people who believe that there are many things that the federal government must or should do will approach it differently than those who believe otherwise. However, whatever one’s ideology, there are tradeoffs that must be made (at least if one ever wants to balance the budget and start paying off the debt) between the revenue and expenditure sides of the ledger. The pressures of competitive politics seem to be to obscure, rather than clarify, the actual choices that need to be made with regard to the budget.
So when AL says that Republicans never want to acknowledge the possibility that tax increases might be part of the solution, he has a point. Unfortunately, by making only that point, he is contributing to the problem, not to the solution. The suggestion is that if Republicans would only acknowledge that some taxes will have to go up, we would be closer to closing the budget gap. Not true. Democrats would pocket that concession and would have no need to make any corresponding spending cuts. On the contrary, if history is any guide, Democrats would use the new taxes as a justification for new spending. Indeed, Obama has rhetorically used his higher taxes on the rich as the revenue source to fund a number of different new programs, and my guess is that the collective cost of the new programs well exceeds the expected revenue from the new taxes.
Instead of writing for the umpteenth time that Republicans are terrible people, perhaps AL could turn his attention to our actual fiscal situation, which as I understand it (I am sure he will correct me if I am wrong) is something like this
1. If all of the Bush tax cuts were repealed today, we would still have an enormous deficit (even assuming that the increased taxes had no effect on economic growth or taxpayer behavior), a deficit that would be getting progressively larger as the fiscal condition of the entitlement programs deteriorates
2. Obama is not proposing to repeal all of the Bush tax cuts, only those for the top income bracket. In fact, Obama is giving an additional tax cut to the bottom 90% (btw, do you think that is “irresponsible”?)
3. I am not aware that Obama is proposing any significant cuts in the large increases in spending enacted during the Bush years. These would include the increases in homeland security spending and the prescription drug program. The only exception to this would be that Obama is winding down the war in Iraq. I assume that this will result in net savings with the intensification of the war in Afghanistan, although I am not sure how much. The long and the short of it is that Obama plans to keep in place the great bulk of Bush’s spending increases.
4. On top of that, Obama is proposing his own spending increases, which are even more enormous than Bush’s. He has proposed some cuts in agricultural subsidies (for which I give him credit), but the bottom line is that overall discretionary spending will dramatically increase under his budget.
5. Obama has not proposed any reduction in entitlement spending. He has already increased spending on children’s health care, and is proposing far greater increases in other health care spending during the next few years.
6. Obama’s budget projects deficits of more than $9 trillion over the next decade (even with the partial rollback of the Bush tax cuts). Many economists believe that this is too optimistic.
Obama’s budget may be more honest, but it is certainly not more responsible than Bush’s. Regardless of how one feels about Obama’s new spending programs, his budget accelerates us toward fiscal disaster. Maybe AL could address this in a future post.
MLS,
More honest is more responsible.
Further, I disagree with you that Obama's budget "accelerates us toward fiscal disaster."
We're already there. Perhaps you hadn't noticed, but the rest of us have.
you know, i come here and read interesting, articulate, and well thought out analyis by people that obviously well educated.
since i was raised on the streets and self-educated i think i would explain things like this:
fuck the republicans, they lost. time to open the filing cabinet of liberal wish lists and start creating more leftists policies while we can. the righties do that when they are in power (and quite well, i might add), why should we capitualte? fuck them and their race baiting, women hating, gay bashing, and thier tired childish nationalistic, over-patriotic selves. they get what they deserve.
I will say something about deficits and the national debt, because there are many misunderstandings about both. The actual budget deficit for a given year, projected budget deficits over the longer term, and the national debt are three completely different things.
While a budget deficit will increase the national debt, deficits are generally only new when one part or the other wishes to use them as political ammunition against the other. A single budget deficit or block of budget deficits can stimulate the economy, if it entails an investment into people and productivity. If future yearly budgets are adjusted to compensate, the debt increase can be recouped very quickly without big tax increase. It should be noted that the United States had a succession of balanced budgets preceding the Great Depression and that the recovery of Roosevelt's first term turned into the Roosevelt Recession when Roosevelt cut back on spending and balanced the budget.
Projected deficits do not exist yet. This is extremely important to understand when Republicans make arguments about 'our grandchildren paying this off for years.'A projected budget deficit does not yet exist and does not affect the debt in any way, it is merely a projection of future deficits if future budgets are roughly equivalent to the current budget. A projected deficit only remains valid if the next budget is exactly the same as the previous budget. This NEVER happens. Projected budget deficits are guidelines for future budgets, but are only valid until the next budget.
The national debt is very big, but it has always been very big. It is paid down by a sinking fund for which a set amount of tax income is reserved. This fund operates the same way all the time, money is taken from it to pay the interest and make small payments against the principle. The only way 'our grandchildren would be paying this debt in increased tax burden' is if it was deemed necessary to increase the yearly investment in the debt fund AND specifically increase taxes to do so.
Debt alarmism is a lie more often than it is not.
mls:
Regarding responsible fiscal policy, I believe it was Dick Cheney who once said, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." That's current Republican orthodoxy, and has devolved to the 'no new taxes!' suicide pact AL describes and Obama refuses to honor.
If I could subject Obama's policiest to a Cheney-esque level of analysis, Clinton proved that deficits can be tamed by robust economic growth spurred by government spending and responsible tax policy.
As for the moral argument that bipartsinship is a worthwhile goal in of itself due to our dire stratis...sure. Who knows -- may be Obama will pull some crazy bipartisan gesture like appointing a Republican Secretary of Defense and try to reform our crazy Cold War era procurement corporate welfare state.
I wonder how that would play with the Republican on the Hill?
MLS:
"But lets assume that Obama's tax increases are a necessary part of the solution."
and, er, just WHAT increases would these be? Bush signed up to end the generous tax cuts he gave to the wealthy, so that is a "BUSH tax increase."
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